Into the Abyss is Werner Herzog's second documentary of 2011 - and it's his second-best documentary of the year as well. Well, that's being very generous: The Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D is one of the best films of the year and one of Herzog's best documentaries, while Into the Abyss is clearly a passion piece that is really not wonderful.
Herzog examines a murder that happened in suburban Houston in 2001 that was apparently committed by two young men, Michael Perry and Jason Burkett. The two were arrested shortly after they killed a woman in her home while trying to steal her car and then killing her son and one of his friends after. They were both convicted for the murders, although only Perry got a death sentence. Part of the film looks at the murder, walking through some of the scenes of the crime with the sheriff, and part of the film is an interview with the two killers, who claim they're not guilty.
There is no real structure to the story, even though there are a handful of inter-titles that pop up now and again to transition from one sequence another (eg: The Crime, The Trial, The Execution, etc.). This mostly feels like a really shoddy version of Errol Morris' brilliant The Thin Blue Line, about another Texas murder. It's clear that Herzog hates the death penalty, though unclear why he's examining this case, where the guy on death row seems pretty darn guilty. That is, his case might be more effective if he was examining a wrongfully convicted man (as Morris did). On top of this, there is a ton of useless back story for each man, including extensive interviews with a woman who met Burkett after he was already in jail and then married him as well as Burkett's father, who is also serving a life sentence for a different murder. It's just a really muddy story and only works if you're already anti-death penalty and just want to hear some sermonizing.
This is a big disappointment for me, as I think Herzog is one of the smartest, greatest filmmakers working today (in documentary and narrative cinema). He does have some wonderful insights at moments in this film, but they're frequently on top of second- and third-level stories that don't really matter to the main thrust of the picture. This is a very missable movie.
Stars: 1.5 of 4
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